


Those Long, Cold Winter Nights

by arcaladiwoompa



Series: Terawatt Outlaws [2]
Category: Homestuck
Genre: Awkwardness, Bulges and Nooks, First Time, Fluff, Flushed Romance | Matesprits, Hermaphroditic Trolls, Horn Stimulation, Horn kink, M/M, Masturbation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-05-08
Updated: 2015-06-21
Packaged: 2018-03-29 13:07:54
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 4,900
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3897520
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/arcaladiwoompa/pseuds/arcaladiwoompa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Meanwhile on Cold as Globes V, Tavros and Karkat are totally getting it on.</p><p>This self-indulgent sidefic takes place after Chapter 41 of Terawatt Outlaws.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

You don’t know how serious Karkat really is, but you’re giggling about rude passive aggressive ice sculptures and variations thereof all the way back to the cave entrance you’re starting to think of as home. At some point he’s slipped his hand into yours, or maybe you slipped your hand into his, and this time when you reach the water’s edge the prospect of stripping down and slipping into the water after each other is far less innocent than an inconvenience borne of necessity. You eagerly shed your clothes and slouch right in with a huge sigh of relief. The pleasantly hot water takes the weight off your legs. Karkat is still trying to preserve his modesty as you turn back to grin at him. “Hurry up before I pull you in, Karkat!”

His face goes red all over again. “Stop _looking_.”

“Hmm, maybe I will, when I stop liking what I see.”

Dumping his clothes at the edge of the pool, Karkat hurriedly sinks in so low the water overlaps him to the tips of his rounded horns. Has he always been this easy to fluster before you realized how fun he is to flirt with? You wait until he comes back up for air and you’re on the attack. Leaning back against the edge of the rock shelf, you pull him into your lap and plant a series of darting kisses on his mouth.

Karkat makes a very satisfying whimpering noise. He has no idea what to do with his hands, and he kisses back so shyly and chastely you’re sure he must have been too fearful about his blood to seek out a concupiscent relationship before. It’s _so sad_. You are definitely going to have to fix that. “Do you mind if I touch your horns?” You murmur, smirking ever so slightly.

“ _What._ ” Karkat sputters. “ _Why?_

You bring your hands up on either side of his face and hold his gaze, your eyes wide with pity. “Oh Karkat, believe me when I say this, because it took a long time for me to learn. You need to stop listening to everyone who tells you the things you can’t change about yourself are wrong and bad and weak, like having empathy, or not enough money to fix anything, or your blood, or my legs. I was only half joking, really, when I asked if you wanted to trade. My horns are so heavy and they keep getting in the way. Yours-” you smile. “-are practical, pitiable, and also tempting.”

“ _Fuck_ ,” sighs Karkat emphatically. “Fuck, okay, you’ve sweet talked me into it.” He fidgets self consciously as you gently close your hands around the top of his horns. You stroke your fingers across the smooth ridges and rub slow circles into the tips with your thumbs. Karkat gradually relaxes into your touch, letting his eyes fall closed. You scrape your nails along the warm chitinous surface and he leans heavily against your hands with a soft gasp. Steering him into another kiss is so easy like this; he would almost fall right into it if you decided to let go. You are more insistent now, curling your tongue behind his upper teeth as your hands slide lower onto orange-red velvet. He tries to stifle a chirp, somewhere between aroused and embarrassed even as he tentatively reaches for your horns in return. You chirr right back at him, an unabashed rising note of encouragement. _Come on, don’t be shy._ You give him a squeeze, and this time Karkat responds so well he cries out and grinds his bone shield into yours.

Oh _wow_ , you _felt_ that. You felt that so hard you need to slam the brakes. “Wait! Stop, Karkat, I’m so sorry.” Your own unsheathed bulge _terrifies_ you and all you can do about it is focus on making it still. You cannot stress how overwhelming it is when parts of your anatomy that have been dead to you throughout your entire adolescence are suddenly jumping up and down like unruly houseguests and setting your nerves on fire. Trembling, you cling to Karkat with an unhappy whine.

Karkat lets go of your horns in a hurry and freezes up with alarm. “Oh shit, did I hurt you again?”

“No, it’s uh- it’s nothing like that.” The irony is terrible; you were trying to be reassuring to Karkat and now you’re the one drowning in shame. “Before, I couldn’t feel… _things_ , not anything below my waist really, but _now_ I can and I thought it was so great, everything about it was supposed to be amazing, not- not like _this_. It’s been _five sweeps_ Karkat, more than half my life, and I sort of, uh-” Your face burns hot with molten copper. “-forgot I have a bulge.” _God_ that was hard to say out loud. He won’t understand; it barely even makes sense to you.

Somehow Karkat hasn’t stopped letting you cuddle him. If anything he’s made himself even more comfortable, leaning heavily against your chest. “Tavros, you do realize this is exactly the kind of shit pity was invented for? We wouldn’t be having this conversation in the first place if you hadn’t saved my mutant ass from wandering around in that barren meat locker until my globes froze off. Take as long as you need. I still want to be your matesprit if you want to be mine.”

You are _so pleased_ to hear him say that. “I- yes, I’d like that.” A rush of affection replaces the majority of the mortification you were feeling, and your bulge doesn’t feel quite as foreign and scary anymore as it calms down and retracts back into its sheath.

Karkat smiles and kisses you. “You suave son of a grub, you nearly took my virginity on our first date. I’m going to have to play harder to get.”

“Haha, just you wait, I still have plans for those horns.”


	2. Chapter 2

Most days Karkat has insomnia. No matter how you cuddle him, kiss him and distract him there’s only so much you can do to keep him from sinking into bouts of overthinking that must leave him lying awake for hours, judging by the time he spends fitfully sleeping in after you get up. Maybe he needs that time alone with his thoughts to sort himself out as best as he can without Sollux. You leave him to it.

The evening is all yours. You borrow the wooly beast hide to wrap around yourself while you climb up to the cave entrance and take a short walk outside, just long enough for the cold to seep into your bones. If only it wasn’t so bitterly windy you could fly instead. You walk back down the slope feeling restless, return the fur and try to content yourself with merely stretching your wings. You flutter and pace impatiently. This is boring.

Your thoughts inevitably turn to what happened with Karkat, a clashing jumble of hopes, desires and worries that make you wish you had a moirail to turn to for advice. Before you can be truly confident in your relationship, it would really help if you could make yourself comfortable in your own body. It occurs to you that there is a way to do that. You could use your abundant free time to explore yourself. You could start to reclaim all the lost and found pieces of anatomy that are rightfully yours, and it doesn’t have to make you feel nearly sick with nerves. There is no one to judge you for making progress at a glacial pace. Flushed copper, you quietly creep into a nice warm indent in the cave wall on the side of the hot spring pool opposite the cave entrance. Here you are neatly tucked out of sight but well within earshot to listen for Karkat’s movements in case he wakes up.

Lying down on your back with your wings splayed, you close your eyes and start by gently trailing the pads of your fingers down your abdomen. The very first thing you discover about yourself is that you can still feel the line where all sensation used to be cut off; now it’s so hypersensitive that the slightest touch anywhere along the circumference makes you gasp. It feels more intense than you’re ready for just yet. You want to try something else and get back to that when you’re more mentally prepared. You leave your right hand resting on your stomach until the sensation fades.

You caress your stomach below the line of sensation and find that it just feels like normal skin. You trace along your hipbones and your thighs. Bending your knees up, you reach out to caress the backs of your thighs and give your ass an experimental squeeze. Huh. To your relief that wasn’t nearly as much of a big deal as you expected it to be. Maybe it would be different if Karkat was the one grabbing your ass. Or kissing it, or leaving a trail of little love bites on his way to your inner thigh… Mm yes, you are feeling just adventurous enough to caress your inner thighs with your fingers. You are panting as you stop just shy of the lips of your nook. You had better quit while you are ahead. As you calm yourself and rest, you are already looking forward to your next session. This was a great idea. All of the dread and confusion is gone.

***

On the second evening, you try tracing across your stomach along the entire hypersensitive line from left grub scar to right. Eyes flying wide open, you stifle a whimper with your left hand. You imagine Karkat ever so carefully kneading at your grub scars with his thumbs, planting wet kisses along the line of your bare waist and that does it for you; you’re fully unsheathed. Unsheathing is every bit as startling and overwhelming as the first time, but this time you’re not nearly as sure that you want to stop.

You stop anyway, because it’s becoming too tempting to let your libido overrule your better judgment. Now that your bulge is already out you’re actually pretty okay with it as long as it isn’t doing anything less innocent than slowly coiling around in the air. In fact if you concentrate on it hard enough it’s sort of like a third hand, if your hand was long, tapering and covered in feathery bristles like the antennae of a moth. What would it feel like to touch them?

Okay you need to not think about that now. It takes an excessive amount of time to make your bulge retreat back into its sheath, and you’re bizarrely disappointed when it does.

***

The third time you let your fingers slide up between your thighs until the tips part the lips of your nook. They come away with a slimy brown coating of your natural lubrication. That’s kind of gross. You haven’t decided if you like it yet. You try rubbing circles around the lips of your nook with two fingers. It feels kind of nice but it isn’t doing all that much for you. You’re not about to risk slicing the inner walls of your nook to ribbons with your claws, so you decide to shelve that experiment until much later, when you’re comfortable enough to let Karkat’s bulge get involved.

***

On your fourth attempt, you’ve come far enough to touch your bone shield. You trace along the hard outer ridges and the soft underside, shivering as you find the slit of your sheath. You grope and squeeze your bone shield. Grinding the heel of your palm down across the ridges feels good; kneading at your sheath feels even better. Pressing your knuckles into the slit, you rub up and down with rhythmic turns of your wrist. As you finally make yourself unsheathe, you pull your hand out of the way. This is the first time you’ve unsheathed deliberately.

Once the first spike of endorphins fades, you reach out very carefully to touch the bristles- _so soft_. You have to bite back a moan at the sudden bright burst of pleasure as the end of your bulge instinctively wraps around your wrist in response. Trying to tug your hand free nearly makes you scream. You’re past the point of no return; there’s no way you can ever calm down enough to make your bulge to let go. _All the way_ is now the only way out. You’re still not ready to grope your bulge in earnest, so you leave your right hand where it is. Loosening, tightening and sliding up and down, your bulge gropes your right hand instead while you give yourself the greatest, most awkward one-handed hornjob of your life with your left. You can’t stop yourself from trilling over and over again. You’re honestly surprised Karkat managed to sleep through that.


	3. Chapter 3

After a full day of insomnia and a subsequent night of cranky exhaustion, Karkat finally manages to pass out so soundly that he’s up before you. You stretch out your arms, legs and wings with a yawn. You lean over the side of the spring, propping your head up on your arm as you try to get a closer look at what he’s doing. He appears to be no less energetic and no crankier than usual. You are pleased to see him.

Karkat is trying to curse very quietly and failing as he clumsily uses two flat, long-ish fragments of wooly beast jaw as a pair of makeshift tongs. He grabs hold of something sizzling on a shelf of rock on the hot side of the cave and accidentally shears it into pieces trying to turn it over. “ _Shittiest_ excuse for a pair of nutrition block implements, I swear to fuck,” he grumbles.

“Hey, good evening Karkat, need any help there?”

He startles and hunches in on himself defensively. “NO stay there, I’m going to do this RIGHT. Wait, fuck, did I wake you up? Way to go Past Karkat, you noisy, inconsiderate doucheknob.”

You grin. “Is that for me?”

“Like fuck I would make you eat something so burnt and misshapen. I still haven’t had time to make any damned plates.”

“I’m really hungry, and I also don’t care. About it not coming out how you wanted it to I mean, not about you making me breakfast, which I think is very sweet.”

“Okay,” Karkat mutters, looking somewhere between nervous and defensive as he sets down some crispy, flaky pieces of some eel-like creature in front of you, so tender it’s falling apart.

Your eyes widen in surprise. “Karkat, did you go hunting without me?”

He shows you a scoop full of holes that he fashioned out of a piece of wooly beast carapace. “I was having so much trouble falling asleep I said ‘fuck it’ and went exploring to see where some of those really narrow crevices lead. I found a lake full of these and I figured you were getting as sick of wooly beast meat as I am.”

You yank him into a sloppy makeout with such vigor you nearly tip him into the water fur cloak and all. It’s too hot to eat right away anyway. By the time you let him off the hook looking dazed and breathless you’re no longer sure whether you’re hungrier for breakfast or for your matesprit. You do the logical thing and opt for both. Climbing out of the water, you bowl him over onto his back, straddle him and bring a morsel to his lips between your delicately pinched claws. Karkat can’t stop staring at you, blushing wildly as he accepts the bite into his mouth and licks the juice from your fingertips.

Then you drip water on his face. Smooth, Tavros.

“ _Fuck_.”

“Okay uh, maybe this was a bad idea.” You let him up; you’ve left a big damp spot across the crotch of his sun cloak.

“New plan: how about we finish breakfast first and _then_ ” He gestures vaguely, “… do whatever you were going to do.”

You’ve been making out a lot lately, but ever since the last time Karkat has understandably been tiptoeing on eggshells about letting it go any further. Fortunately after all of your experimenting you think you have a pretty good grasp of what you can handle now. “Well what I was sort of planning was, since I guess you have to let your clothes dry now anyway, do you want to come into the water with me and touch my horns?”

Karkat can’t decide whether to get nervous and excited or cringe. “I’m only accepting that terrible come-on because I pity you.”

“Oh, good.”

“Stop me if it gets to be too much alright?”

“Yeah.”

You’re glad he doesn’t rush through breakfast too much. When Karkat slips into the water with you, you pull him into another kiss by the horns, feeling him get distracted as you twist your hands across the tips. This time Karkat doesn’t hesitate to reach for yours. The orange velvet extends so far up your horns Karkat can’t even reach the yellow; you shiver as he caresses a vast swath on either side. It feels comfortably familiar; unlike your bulge and nook you’ve been taking advantage of this erogenous zone for sweeps. You slide your hands lower onto the orange velvet of Karkat’s horns and back up again, falling into a steady rhythm that he begins to mirror. Karkat breaks off your kiss to catch his breath; you can hear the slightest hint of a moan creeping into every exhale. You add a little squeeze onto the end of your downward stroke; his hands instinctively tighten and he _twists_.

“Ah!” You arch your bone shield up against the underside of Karkat’s as you unsheathe, making his bulge follow right after. It’s so unbelievably, excruciatingly tempting to tangle around him and rut yourself into oblivion. _Too much, too soon_ , the last remaining sliver of fear is the only thing that allows you to concentrate on your bulge enough to coil it out of the way across your stomach. When you shake your head, subtly nudging him to let go of your horns, he throws his arms around your neck and clings to you instead. Letting go of Karkat’s horns, you free up your hands to gently push him out of your lap and trap his bulge before it gets any ideas.

“Oh god, oh fuck, Tavros!” The tip of Karkat’s bulge coils between your fingers and he grinds into your thigh. His response to your touch goes straight to your nook and you blush hard. Oh hey, his bulge has a ridged texture. _Focus, Tavros. Deep breaths._ You can’t let yourself get sidetracked until things get out of control. “Karkat wait, we need to _move_ -”

Karkat lets out the most pitiful _agonized_ moan as he forces himself to slow to a halt. You want to expose your neck to him and chirr seductively; you want to grab his ass with both hands and pull him right back down into your lap. You are _really_ on the knife’s edge here. After a few deep, calming breaths Karkat opens his eyes and focuses on you with a soft, concerned gaze. “Are you alright?”

“Not for long, because my bulge wants your bulge _so badly_ and my think pan isn’t ready. Can you get out of the water and lie down somewhere here at the edge please, so I can reach your horns without having to worry?”

Karkat obediently climbs out of the water and settles in a warm spot in front of you. “Holy shit, you mean you’re unsheathed and it didn’t even bother you this time?”

“I’ve been practicing,” you admit to him, somewhere between proud and embarrassed.

“Oh my nubslurping _fuck_.”

“Um, it’s probably not nearly as sexy as it sounds.”

“Like _hell_ it isn’t. If I knew what your bulge looked like I’d never be able to stop imagining it.”

You chirp, momentarily flustered beyond coherency. When he puts it _that_ way, you find it hard to disagree. It’s only fair that you show him yours since you already caught a really good view of his. You hoist yourself up into a sitting position beside him at the edge of the hot spring, coiled bulge twisting against itself at the very idea of giving Karkat something to visualize. He rolls onto his back, eyes firmly fixed on you as he runs a hand up his candy red bulge from base to tip. He arches into his hand with a shuddering sigh.

You can’t stand to keep your hands off him for one second longer. Slipping back into the water behind Karkat, you grab hold of his horns and slide all the way from yellow to red. You work him over hard, never slipping past orange on the upward stroke. Karkat trills loud and high. His voice sends you on such an intoxicating power trip. You love making him warble like a songbird. “Don’t you think for one second, Karkat, that I was going to let you self-pail before I’m finished with you.” Then you stop bothering with orange entirely, thoroughly groping the red roots buried in his haphazard crow’s nest of hair. Karkat _screeches_. His whole body goes rigid, then he melts like butter on a hot stove. Your self control doesn’t merely crack, it _explodes_. You grab for your bulge with both hands and wrench upward against the grain of the bristles, hitting a wailing, sobbing orgasm before you even reach the tip. You sag against the rocky ledge of the hot spring with your chin resting on your folded arms. Karkat fondly rubs the blunt tip of his right horn against the root of your left and you arch weakly through an aftershock. His erratic rasping purr is reminiscent of a rusty lawnmower.

“Next time _I_ want to get you to make that sound.”

“Next time,” you respond with conviction, “I’m braiding our bulges together.”


	4. Chapter 4

This evening has you thinking about more than just a brief, chilly walk. You now have a decent enough cache of food to start with, but the launch of Project Offensive Ice Sculpture still requires one more thing: another wooly beast cloak. Karkat still does not have adequate weaponry to safely pull this off by himself. You frown, staring pensively out the mouth of the cave as you consider the unsavory options available to you. You can keep exploring the cavern indefinitely until you forget about the goal that brought Karkat out of the depths of grief, or you can face the guilt and pain of luring another beast to an untimely death. In reality you’ve already decided on the second option long ago, it’s just hard to find the courage to follow through. You take a deep breath and step outside.

Tonight the wind is _finally_ favorable for flight, stiff enough to give you a lift without tossing you about wildly like a scrap of debris in a tornado. What if… what if you could prove to yourself that you can pull off a hunt just once without Karkat’s help? What if you don’t need to use your communing powers to deceive and keep your prey still? You could fly up with a large blunt rock and use it as a projectile, fair and square. You pick up a good sized rock and try to drop it into the small pit of a nearby dried up hot spring. Aiming is _hard_ even when you swoop in so low you’re nearly in point blank range, but it’s okay, you have plenty of time to get it right. The exertion of flying with a heavy rock in your arms keeps you warm and brings a healthy flush of copper to your cheeks. You keep practicing until your wing muscles burn, and it feels immensely satisfying.

Karkat is awake by the time you return to your hot spring, so you make absolutely no secret of how good you feel right now. You strip and sprawl out in the water beside him with a pleased little moan that wipes the drowsiness off his face in a hurry. “That, was exactly what I needed.”

“ _Fuck_ , Tavros, what should I be imagining here?”

“I was out flying, but I’m not sorry for making you think of other things, because the look on your face is really cute right now. I think I overdid it a little bit, maybe, but it was worth it.”

“If that’s your unsubtle way of telling me ‘please pity my poor sore wing muscles and get your hands all over them’ then you’d better hurry up and turn around already.”

“ _Well_ , now that you mention it…”

“I fucking knew it,” Karkat grumbles affectionately as he sits behind you, bracketing your hips with his knees. He works his way down the center of your back with the knuckles of both hands. You lean forward onto your folded arms and enjoy it. Then he reaches _exactly_ the point where your spinal injury used to be and the sharp, bright pleasure of it takes you so unexpectedly that you’ve already been crying out and grinding your ass into his bone shield for several seconds before you realize what you’re doing. “ _Wow_ , um,” you gasp, “that’s a thing, I didn’t tell you about yet. I shouldn’t be surprised, I guess, that the line goes all the way around.”

Karkat’s voice goes low and predatory. “All the way around, huh?” You forget every word that isn’t his name as he proceeds to investigate this for himself. He gropes his way around your middle, rubbing quick little circles with curious fingers from your back below your wings to your stomach. His hands skip your grub scars as they ghost over your sides, only to return after his hands have crossed past each other, his arms are completely wrapped around you and his body is flush against your back. This is a mistake. He switches from groping your grub scars to pinching and rolling them between his fingers, and you unsheathe so quickly the rush of sensation makes you feel faint. As soon as you do his arms aren’t going anywhere; you have just inadvertently bound them together below the wrists with your bulge. Behind your desperation you have just enough presence of mind to feel embarrassed. You whine and bury your face in your arms. 

You have the best matesprit, because somehow instead of sharing your mortification Karkat is actually turned on by this. He unsheathes between your thighs. Along the way the hot ridges of his bulge ghost over the lips of your nook, passing the slightest touch of pheromones along to your receptors through the warm spring water. Your eyes go wide and you release a small cloud of your own lubricating fluid, making him tighten his arms around you and trill. If you weren’t in the hot spring right now your nook would be dripping all over him. His bulge feels so distractingly different from your fingers that you almost miss him asking you if you still want to tangle your bulges together. It takes several tries before you can piece together a coherent reply. “This time, I changed, ah _Karkat_! -my mind, I want, I suddenly, _really_ need you, hnn- in my nook.”

You can feel Karkat’s bulge curling in on itself against the underside of your bone shield at the sound of his name. He is shaking slightly with the effort to keep it from going any further. “Oh _god_ Tavros, I can try to go slow but I’m not sure I have much more control over my bulge than you do.”

“ _Please_ ,” you whine, grinding back against him, and that’s all it takes for him to let loose and slide into you all at once. You’re not even sure which of you trills higher at this point. His pheromones light up a thousand brand new receptors inside you, and he is so, _so_ warm. His ridges apply increasing pressure against the grain of the feathered bristles lining your nook walls as the taper of his bulge widens. The sensation advances through you like a wave, and when it crashes against your seedflap your whole world dissolves into sunlight. You clench around him in waves you never knew you were capable of making; Karkat screams and thrashes inside you, arms clinging tightly around your waist. You can’t let go of him even on your way down from your peak and you think somehow you must not be finished after all. Then Karkat corkscrews through your seedflap into your gene bladder. You’re blind all over again, and you _still_ can’t let go. Finally, deep inside your gene bladder at the very highest point that Karkat can reach, his bulge drives home into the same band of sensitivity that runs along the plane of your spinal injury. You come so hard you may never orgasm again.

At some point you become aware of Karkat leaning heavily against your back. It takes several minutes before you can work up the energy to begin the delicate process of extricating yourselves from each other, and even then it’s only because you’d rather turn around and have him cuddle you face to face.

Later that evening you decide you’re ready to go hunting with Karkat after all.


End file.
